1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to network computing and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for processing a multi-step authentication sequence that includes a plurality of queries distributed over a plurality of web pages.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many transactions are conducted with the assistance of identification tools, such as passwords, signatures, social security numbers (SSN), driver license numbers, retinal scans, bio-scans and the like. Such transactions include financial, such as banking (e.g., withdrawing, transferring and depositing money through an ATM), commercial sales (e.g., using a credit or debit card to purchase goods and services) and the like; or personal such as social networking sites, blog subscriptions and the like. The above transactions usually require a login name and a password, but may require other identification information.
With recent increases in financial transaction and personal security, new solutions have been created to provide a more secure user login mechanism. Such solutions changed the typical single authentication step, which usually contained only a username and password field, to a multi-step authentication sequence disseminated across multiple web pages. In a typical multi-step authentication sequence the first page may ask for a username, the second page may display a validation image and/or a phrase and a challenge question (e.g., “What city where you born in?”), and the third page may ask for a password. As such, software designed to auto-answer the single authentication step are unable to auto-answer the multi-step authentication sequence.
Accordingly, there exists the need for a method and apparatus for automatically answering multi-step authentication sequences.